I was talking to someone yesterday about Dennis Hopper and he told me that Dennis is very very sick and the news made me so sad. I dug through my albums and dusted off this old soundtrack, recorded for the documentary movie The American Dreamer with Dennis Hopper, made in 1971. I still haven't seen the movie except for bits and pieces but I love this record so much. It feaures Gene Clark, John Manning, Hello People, and John Buck Wilkin. Dennis wrote the liner notes and I read through them again. This paragraph struck me as particularly poignant:

"I'm still, at 34, terribly naive. The whole world of business, the money-mongers, it's a totally outrageous world to me. I want to make movies and I want to talk about humanity in symbolistic, mystical terms. I have very little to do with business. I'm probably trapped in a world of my own creation.

The song that really kills me and reminds the most of Dennis Hopper is "Pass Me By" by Hello People. It's sounds like driving down a highway, not really caring where you're going or if you arrive. I know that Dennis probably loved this one. He brought a certain anarchy to film-making and the truth is, they just don't make the kind of movies he used to do anymore, movies like Easy Rider, Cool Hand Luke, and The Trip. I think I see a Dennis Hopper film festival in my future.